I wholeheartedly agree with that. It's trying to solve too many things at once. Revolution instead of evolution always costs you. At first the new thing may seem to do everything the old could, but you later find out it doesn't.
It completely breaks the whole IP philosophy and moves to a bastard child of IPSec (the who-needs-routing-tables protocol, and the blatant layering violation brought by IKE) and IPX. If IPX seems good, you simply don't understand the beauty of IPv4.
There's nothing worse from a useability standpoint than providing enough similarity to trigger automated behaviour, but then being different enough for that behaviour to have different results.
So the copy-then-innovate path is fundamentally flawed, because you have to start out by copying 100% faithfully. Gradual evolution from there is very hard on the user too, precisely for the reason stated above.
On the other hand, if something is/different/ but simply better, users will come. Instead of looking at Windows, read Raskin, and try to attract people who have/vision/ in this area.
After all, people managed to switch from WordPerfect 5.1 to Word 2.0, not because of Word's similarity, but because it was simply better for painting memos at the time, and that is what people most often do with their word processors.
His architecture was undoubtedly good, initially, but then the weight of the whole thing started to shift towards the win32 subsystem, which even got to take shortcuts to the hardware and everything else in the end.
So, we ended up with plain Windows, warts and all, on top of something resembling a microkernel, similar to OSF and some other unices that had their underbelly replaced by Mach.
The whole win32 layer should have been completely re-implemented, as lightweight services, keeping only the sane parts of the application level API, and shove the rest into a compatibility thing that should be deprecated from day 1. Apple is able to pull that stunt quite well (cf. Carbon).
... that there is data available or room for new data from the host -- nothing more. You still need to be able to pull that data from it and to write data and control information. The interrupt itself doesn't convey any other information than 'hey, interrupt #13 just got raised'.
Then, you either do the reading and writing through a memory window (ie. the device presents itself as a sort of pseudo-memory somewhere in the physical memory addressing range of the host CPU) or through an I/O window (a separate addressing space with separate instructions to access it).
Of course I understand that the normal high pitched noise you can hear near a TV is just the coil being loose or other stuff moving air, ie. generating ordinary sound. That's a purely auditory phenomenon. I was merely describing the sound/sensation I have had after exposure to some Wi-Fi APs.
I agree that the photo flash triggers lots of nerve cells and that it's much easier to cause disruption this way. Nerve cells may not ordinarily be very sensitive to RF, but the signal recovery that can be done by massive paralellism (think lofar) is enormous. Also, half a lambda of 2.4GHz fits nicely in your skull -- maximum efficiency wrt. potential and field strength differences.
I really have the experience of 'raising the noise floor' in the head, if I can use that analogy. Near APs or some operating cellular phones I can't think of as many things at once as I'm used to, and as a programmer, it's essential to cover lots of possibilities and decision trees quickly.
I'm playing with the possibility of cognitive problems, because around here, there's still in most cases no AP operating near you. If this feeling of only being able to hold one strong thought at a time occurs, and I ask eg. my customer whether there's wireless, most often there is. I also often measure if there's any Wi-Fi around, and a good day is often confirmed by no Wi-Fi around.
By the way, I didn't mean to paint USians ignorant! I just think they're generally going a bit overboard these days with installing Wi-Fi in every coffee shop, around every park, and those municipal Wi-Fi projects. It has a cool factor to surf the web in impossible places, but generally you prefer a bit of comfort for serious computing.
Biological tissue is not just your average beef steak, you know -- biological tissue can also refer to the huge parallel DSP with certain lofar-like properties that is your brain.
The is no mechanism for low power, 'low' frequency electromagnetic radiation to directly affect covalent bonds. Agreed. Cell phones don't produce enough watts to heat you up enough to cause serious heat damage. Agreed.
But if you consider that a low intensity, 15 Hz flash is enough to give some people epileptic seizures, while they can easily stand the intensity of the continuous sun, then that gives me some reason to suspect that a signal's low frequency envelope and the disturbance that can cause on the oscillating processes that take place in your brain and even in simpler cells is the thing to look out for here.
Personal experience has made me quite cautious with pulsed broadband microwaves, especially if the pulse frequency is below a few hundred Hz.
You Wi-Fi worshipping USians may not believe it, but I personally hear high pitched noises (akin to the PAL 15 kHz flyback frequency hou hear with old TVs) and/or experience subtle memory and concentration losses around plain 100 mW 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi APs.
But I still doubt that there is signficant non-thermal influence on chemical reactions by certain 'matching' microwave photons, the only other reasonable cause of adverse effects. AFAIK all the studies in this area are at least highly disputed.
I've been wondering about a couple of other interaction modes and would be interested to hear what people more versed in this stuff can say about them.
1. AM demodulation - if absorbed radio energy in the GHz range varies in a certain period (eg. 100Hz), is there any biological process that may cause a 100Hz signal to be generated in your brain?
2. potential differences - it's all fine that strong chemical interactions aren't likely, but in case of a wavelength of a few centimeters, the maximum difference in potential (1/2 lambda) will fit inside your skull. In case of 'common' radio applications, it won't be enough for an electroshock, but I wonder if it doesn't raise our 'noise floor'. We evolved in an EM environment that was noisy at times, but mostly quite silent. No persistent 'wide' band screeches, strong AM patterns, or GHz carriers.
If you think extremely small currents can't be received by coarse synapses, think LOFAR -- you just take an/awful/ lot of them to restore your signal. This is exactly what the brain is good at.
The reason I'm asking is that NL has just started with DVB-T transmissions on UHF, UMTS at 2.1GHz is getting some users and that this hugely overrated WiFi-revolution has really picked up steam mid 2004 here. Since that time, I've become quite sensitive to some EM generating equipment in terms of 'hearing' extremely high pitched noises and experiencing concentration loss. If I notice I'm struggling for words, and measure if there's a good WiFi signal, more often than not there is (and if I'm not having the problem, more often than not there's no WiFi -- I'm sure as hell staying away from it now).
The reasoning is: it doesn't ionise, and doesn't cause heat damage, so there's no interaction, not even with a live human brain. I find that reasoning a bit bold, to be honest. Of course the service providers have an interest to keep beating that drum, but that you need to carry the burden of proof if you're worried about health effects is, frankly, not very scientific.
The difference is that it's easier to change governments in a democracy (one man, one vote) than it is to change corporations in a market (one dollar, one vote).
Governments can't put votes in the bank.
Money can be concentrated freely, and if money is power, then power can be concentrated freely. That's inherently anti-democratic and that's the problem with corporate law.
You're missing the forest for the trees. That mechanism you introduced as far fetched with 'maybe, maybe' is far less intricate than the immune system.
In the vast majority of cases, cancer cells are killed by your immune system before they get a chance to develop into tumors. So it only takes an agent to subtly affect your immune system (is a psychological mood subtle enough for you) to allow for an increase in cancer. Don't invoke that "doesn't ionize, so doesn't harm" too soon!
A propos, I think that cancer is vastly overrated as an endpoint in studies about new chemical or physical agent. "If it doesn't cause cancer, it's harmless", seems to be the line of thinking. Ritalin, Seroxat, Prozac don't cause cancer, but I wouldn't dream about taking them if I haven't developed any of the conditions for which they're prescribed.
What I think is much more important than cancer in the context of the wireless revolution is whether all that electromagnetic noise could raise the noise floor in your brain, killing subtle thoughts, creativity and inspiration.
It wouldn't surprise me if antennae turn out to be the factory chimneys of the 21st century. We're in a "hooray, we've found an unlimited new toy" stage right now, and it'll probably take a few years before we move to lower power levels, and probably more importantly, more carefully chosen signal envelopes and/or modulation types to avoid interfering with the human brain.
The brain was constructed before EMC guidelines were in effect, so it may not be all that resilient against interference.
That attitude "I can't see a mechanism, so it can't be true" is so thoroughly un-scientific, especially if there/are/ scientifically proven routes to cancer other than DNA damage. DNA damage occurs naturally, it also depends on how well you repair it or do away with cells that have gone astray.
The german law seems to say that authors have a right to be compensated for fair use copies, and to that end, manufacturers of copying equipment (VCRs, and now also computers) are required to put some money into VG Wort.
About the philosophical problem of evil though; I think it's possible to postulate a God who is omniscient, omnipotent and compassionate at the same time, by introducing the concept of voluntary non-interference with the freedom to choose of humans and the customs (some call them laws) of nature.
The question is really, if God knows all and can do all, why didn't He intervene? I think the answer is, he can, but often the order of nature and our freedom is worth more to him than the disasters that happen.
If as a species we only could be saved by God taking away our freedom of choice and reducing us to mere angels, who have no choice but to obey God, then that would be pretty sad, and I for one am rather human, despite all the suffering that occurs due to human actions, than a creature that lacks the unique responsibility that comes with this life.
The problem is that whatever computer you're connecting to, can verify that you do it from Commercial App v1.0, key ID 03adeb4652098d, and not from Open Source App v2.88, that merely pretends to be Commercial App.
You/used/ to be able to pretend, if you just followed a protocol. Ditto for the OS: if you control the OS, you can fake things like eg. MAC addresses, CPU serial nrs. to the application.
This is what's made impossible with TCPA.
So even though you can still/run/ Firefox, if you can't access any website because CNN prefers that you use IE, which they know does not filter ads, leaves cookies as they are, and does not print/save pages they don't want you to print/save,/AND CNN CAN VERIFY THAT YOU *ARE* RUNNING IE, WITH NO FAKING POSSIBLE/ then that helps you exactly zero.
Are you starting to understand the problem now? Power from the consumer, power to the content providers. Internet reduced to digital TV. Drool'n click, view the ads.
Let's say EM noise or narrowband CW or FM has little to no effect to the basic functions of the organism. If that weren't true, I agree we'd probably already know about it.
What if certain pulse patterns (AM side effect of any power efficient digital transmission) turn out to significantly raise the 'noise floor' in mammal brains, causing strong and clear thoughts/emotions to remain, but subtle inspiration to be reduced by 50 %.
It will be near impossible to ever prove such a phenomenon scientifically, because inspiration/creativity/sensitivity to subtle thoughts is a little hard to measure in animal experiments, and because you have no control group.
But in the end, society becomes less and less likely to produce another Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Bach or Chopin as we continue to increase the microwave flooding of the whole developed world so that a few gadget addicts can play with their toys.
It would be such an unbearable drama. The frightning thing is that I see no way of countering such a scenario, and no automatic countereffect either.
... between the amount of energy absorbed and the increase in cancer probability???
Really, if all biology would reason 'there either has to be a linear, direct relationship to factor X of phenomenon Y to endpoint Z, or else I've just proven that Y has nothing to do with Z', then it wouldn't advance very fast as a science.
It can as well be the frequency, or there can be a non-linear relationship (eg. anything above 0,2 mW/cm2 gives 5 % increase), or whatever.
So, it appears that Sveasoft, who makes firmware that is derived from GPLed software for Linksys' WRT54G router, has found an interesting way to 'discourage' recipients of their source and binary software from redistributing it -- apparently without violating section 6 of the GPL ('You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.').
Their trick is that in order to receive binary + source prereleases, you need to have a paid subscription with them. That's fine under the GPL of course. However, they say that once you excercise your right to redistribute granted by the GPL, they will terminate your paid subscription, which of course does not revoke any rights to the software you've received (which were given you under a GPL license after all), but it does make it impossible to get/future/ pre-releases without subscribing again, for a certain fee.
They seem to think that because the 'punishment' for excercising certain rights granted by the GPL does not place any additional restrictions on/the particular version of the software you received/, it does not trigger GPL section 6.
It's all very interesting and could be a way for software companies that build their products upon GPLed software to harass their customers into not redistributing them.
Indeed. A continuous wave or narrowband FM signal at 2.4 GHz shouldn't do much harm other than warming things a little. However, when you start sending all sorts of pulse patterns it becomes a whole different matter.
I can see a possibility of small water droplets functioning as a small AM demodulator for 2.4 GHz signals -- after all, temperature will follow signal intensity. If such droplets are enclosed in something else, pressure will vary with the same pulse rithm. Perhaps it's even possible to make a small cavity resonate, I don't know.
The problem is that almost all research into non-ionizing radiation looks only at the amount of energy transferred, and the risks associated with absorbing that energy, as if it's diffuse and applied continuously. Indeed, when evaluated this way, any electromagnetic energy with frequencies below X-ray will have very manageable risks.
Really, unless we know about the long term effects (and can you ever? I mean, there's no way of scientifically measuring, say, a 5 % decrease in intelligence or concentration over 10 years), I want to be able to avoid WiFi if I want to.
To me that means it's OK in gas stations, hotel lobbies, places where you will only be for a short time, but not if you start bathing parks, residential areas and everything in pulsed 2.4 GHz.
The brains is the most complex analog device in the known universe, and as the signal of one thing is always the noise of another, I am not too happy with the prospect of flooding the world in microwaves.
Let's say I offer you something, and I say that you can have it and enjoy it, but I expected to be compensated. You decide that you're not going to pay me, and that you're going to take it anyway. How does this senario in any way equate to what you've just suggested?
It does not, but what you just said is not what you seemed to implicate in your parent post -- that there must always be compensation and it's theft otherwise.
Theft is removing something from someone. Copying is duplicating without removing.
In either case, not giving compensation where that's expected is in some cases illegal, in some cases immoral, and in some cases the expectation of a return was unjustified.
But theft and copying without authorisation are two completely different things. It's much more natural that there should always be a compensation when something is removed from someone, with the gift as the exception. But because nothing is removed from me if you take a copy, compensation is not that natural. The only reason why compensation may be required, is that society has decided to try and stimulate the production of information by granting a tradeable monopoly on copying.
By your reasoning, enjoying anything of value without compensation is illegal. In that case, any form of giving without expecting a return is illegal too. That'd be sick.
This is exactly what the RIAA wants you to believe. Receiving value without compensating is theft. That is simply not true. Outside the zero-sum world (esp.. the realm of information and other intangibles) you'll find lots of information wheter this doesn't hold.
If I don't respect a lawful monopoly on distribution, then I'm violating the law. I'm not taking any property. I'm not taking his monopoly. I'm not taking anything physical. I'm only lowering the probability of me purchasing a copy. If that's bad, then informing myself must be also bad because it lowers the probability of me purchasing crap products.
However you turn things around, you keep coming back to an artificial construct that is (was!) designed with a specific purpose in mind: to encourage the production of creative works, at the cost of disallowing free sharing of copies and derived works. The tradeoff might have been worth it, but with the current terms and in its current DMCA/EUCD form, I'm personally convinced that doesn't hold anymore.
IMHO we need to move to a scheme where the interested audience pays once, before the work is published. The audience invests based on reputation and bears the risk. After publishing, the author releases all control.
A system where an artist could put up an auction saying, "I need 750,000 EUR to make this production. Collection of funds ends in three months. If the required amount hasn't been reached, everyone will be payed back minus 5% to cover auction costs and other expenses, guaranteed by bank XYZ. Previous works are..,..,..,.., auctioned for..,.., and.., resp." would be ideal. Couple this with a good search engine to allow public and artist to find each other and I think music, games, film, and other products of pure information could thrive without copyrights.
The only thing you'd miss as an artist is the income from surprise hits. You'll only be able to cash in on your next production. But this still seems to be a better tradeoff, that wouldn't put off artists in the same way the current system puts of the audience and produces bland, riskless prefab artists. All IMHO of course.
If you can get more privacy by spending money, then you obviously don't have the "right" to that amount of privacy unless you pay for it.
Obviously this line of reasoning is nonsense. Substitute 'justice', 'freedom of speech', 'representatives in Congress' for 'privacy' and you see how ridiculous this is.
Slashdot Mirror
Hold people hostage, not harddisks!
Of course, it's IoT, so we shouldn't question the benefits.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. It's trying to solve too many things at once. Revolution instead of evolution always costs you. At first the new thing may seem to do everything the old could, but you later find out it doesn't.
It completely breaks the whole IP philosophy and moves to a bastard child of IPSec (the who-needs-routing-tables protocol, and the blatant layering violation brought by IKE) and IPX. If IPX seems good, you simply don't understand the beauty of IPv4.
For a different take on it, see DJB's piece at http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
Cheers,
Emile
There's nothing worse from a useability standpoint than providing enough similarity to trigger automated behaviour, but then being different enough for that behaviour to have different results.
/different/ but simply better, users will come. Instead of looking at Windows, read Raskin, and try to attract people who have /vision/ in this area.
So the copy-then-innovate path is fundamentally flawed, because you have to start out by copying 100% faithfully. Gradual evolution from there is very hard on the user too, precisely for the reason stated above.
On the other hand, if something is
After all, people managed to switch from WordPerfect 5.1 to Word 2.0, not because of Word's similarity, but because it was simply better for painting memos at the time, and that is what people most often do with their word processors.
Cheers,
Emile.
His architecture was undoubtedly good, initially, but then the weight of the whole thing started to shift towards the win32 subsystem, which even got to take shortcuts to the hardware and everything else in the end.
So, we ended up with plain Windows, warts and all, on top of something resembling a microkernel, similar to OSF and some other unices that had their underbelly replaced by Mach.
The whole win32 layer should have been completely re-implemented, as lightweight services, keeping only the sane parts of the application level API, and shove the rest into a compatibility thing that should be deprecated from day 1. Apple is able to pull that stunt quite well (cf. Carbon).
Cheers,
Emile.
... that there is data available or room for new data from the host -- nothing more. You still need to be able to pull that data from it and to write data and control information. The interrupt itself doesn't convey any other information than 'hey, interrupt #13 just got raised'.
Then, you either do the reading and writing through a memory window (ie. the device presents itself as a sort of pseudo-memory somewhere in the physical memory addressing range of the host CPU) or through an I/O window (a separate addressing space with separate instructions to access it).
Cheers,
Emile.
Of course I understand that the normal high pitched noise you can hear near a TV is just the coil being loose or other stuff moving air, ie. generating ordinary sound. That's a purely auditory phenomenon. I was merely describing the sound/sensation I have had after exposure to some Wi-Fi APs.
I agree that the photo flash triggers lots of nerve cells and that it's much easier to cause disruption this way. Nerve cells may not ordinarily be very sensitive to RF, but the signal recovery that can be done by massive paralellism (think lofar) is enormous. Also, half a lambda of 2.4GHz fits nicely in your skull -- maximum efficiency wrt. potential and field strength differences.
I really have the experience of 'raising the noise floor' in the head, if I can use that analogy. Near APs or some operating cellular phones I can't think of as many things at once as I'm used to, and as a programmer, it's essential to cover lots of possibilities and decision trees quickly.
I'm playing with the possibility of cognitive problems, because around here, there's still in most cases no AP operating near you. If this feeling of only being able to hold one strong thought at a time occurs, and I ask eg. my customer whether there's wireless, most often there is. I also often measure if there's any Wi-Fi around, and a good day is often confirmed by no Wi-Fi around.
By the way, I didn't mean to paint USians ignorant! I just think they're generally going a bit overboard these days with installing Wi-Fi in every coffee shop, around every park, and those municipal Wi-Fi projects. It has a cool factor to surf the web in impossible places, but generally you prefer a bit of comfort for serious computing.
Cheers,
Emile.
Biological tissue is not just your average beef steak, you know -- biological tissue can also refer to the huge parallel DSP with certain lofar-like properties that is your brain.
The is no mechanism for low power, 'low' frequency electromagnetic radiation to directly affect covalent bonds. Agreed. Cell phones don't produce enough watts to heat you up enough to cause serious heat damage. Agreed.
But if you consider that a low intensity, 15 Hz flash is enough to give some people epileptic seizures, while they can easily stand the intensity of the continuous sun, then that gives me some reason to suspect that a signal's low frequency envelope and the disturbance that can cause on the oscillating processes that take place in your brain and even in simpler cells is the thing to look out for here.
Personal experience has made me quite cautious with pulsed broadband microwaves, especially if the pulse frequency is below a few hundred Hz.
You Wi-Fi worshipping USians may not believe it, but I personally hear high pitched noises (akin to the PAL 15 kHz flyback frequency hou hear with old TVs) and/or experience subtle memory and concentration losses around plain 100 mW 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi APs.
Cheers,
Emile.
But I still doubt that there is signficant non-thermal influence on chemical reactions by certain 'matching' microwave photons, the only other reasonable cause of adverse effects. AFAIK all the studies in this area are at least highly disputed.
/awful/ lot of them to restore your signal. This is exactly what the brain is good at.
I've been wondering about a couple of other interaction modes and would be interested to hear what people more versed in this stuff can say about them.
1. AM demodulation - if absorbed radio energy in the GHz range varies in a certain period (eg. 100Hz), is there any biological process that may cause a 100Hz signal to be generated in your brain?
2. potential differences - it's all fine that strong chemical interactions aren't likely, but in case of a wavelength of a few centimeters, the maximum difference in potential (1/2 lambda) will fit inside your skull. In case of 'common' radio applications, it won't be enough for an electroshock, but I wonder if it doesn't raise our 'noise floor'. We evolved in an EM environment that was noisy at times, but mostly quite silent. No persistent 'wide' band screeches, strong AM patterns, or GHz carriers.
If you think extremely small currents can't be received by coarse synapses, think LOFAR -- you just take an
The reason I'm asking is that NL has just started with DVB-T transmissions on UHF, UMTS at 2.1GHz is getting some users and that this hugely overrated WiFi-revolution has really picked up steam mid 2004 here. Since that time, I've become quite sensitive to some EM generating equipment in terms of 'hearing' extremely high pitched noises and experiencing concentration loss. If I notice I'm struggling for words, and measure if there's a good WiFi signal, more often than not there is (and if I'm not having the problem, more often than not there's no WiFi -- I'm sure as hell staying away from it now).
The reasoning is: it doesn't ionise, and doesn't cause heat damage, so there's no interaction, not even with a live human brain. I find that reasoning a bit bold, to be honest. Of course the service providers have an interest to keep beating that drum, but that you need to carry the burden of proof if you're worried about health effects is, frankly, not very scientific.
Cheers,
Emile.
The difference is that it's easier to change governments in a democracy (one man, one vote) than it is to change corporations in a market (one dollar, one vote).
Governments can't put votes in the bank.
Money can be concentrated freely, and if money is power, then power can be concentrated freely. That's inherently anti-democratic and that's the problem with corporate law.
Cheers,
Emile.
You're missing the forest for the trees. That mechanism you introduced as far fetched with 'maybe, maybe' is far less intricate than the immune system.
/are/ scientifically proven routes to cancer other than DNA damage. DNA damage occurs naturally, it also depends on how well you repair it or do away with cells that have gone astray.
In the vast majority of cases, cancer cells are killed by your immune system before they get a chance to develop into tumors. So it only takes an agent to subtly affect your immune system (is a psychological mood subtle enough for you) to allow for an increase in cancer.
Don't invoke that "doesn't ionize, so doesn't harm" too soon!
A propos, I think that cancer is vastly overrated as an endpoint in studies about new chemical or physical agent. "If it doesn't cause cancer, it's harmless", seems to be the line of thinking. Ritalin, Seroxat, Prozac don't cause cancer, but I wouldn't dream about taking them if I haven't developed any of the conditions for which they're prescribed.
What I think is much more important than cancer in the context of the wireless revolution is whether all that electromagnetic noise could raise the noise floor in your brain, killing subtle thoughts, creativity and inspiration.
It wouldn't surprise me if antennae turn out to be the factory chimneys of the 21st century. We're in a "hooray, we've found an unlimited new toy" stage right now, and it'll probably take a few years before we move to lower power levels, and probably more importantly, more carefully chosen signal envelopes and/or modulation types to avoid interfering with the human brain.
The brain was constructed before EMC guidelines were in effect, so it may not be all that resilient against interference.
That attitude "I can't see a mechanism, so it can't be true" is so thoroughly un-scientific, especially if there
Cheers,
Emile
The german law seems to say that authors have a right to be compensated for fair use copies, and to that end, manufacturers of copying equipment (VCRs, and now also computers) are required to put some money into VG Wort.
That's all.
Cheers,
Emile.
Your country isn't badmouthed, you are not badmouthed, rather your government is criticised, and for very good reasons.
These people do an appeal to you as a human, not as an American.
Kind regards,
Emile.
Well, if only one could exist...
About the philosophical problem of evil though; I think it's possible to postulate a God who is omniscient, omnipotent and compassionate at the same time, by introducing the concept of voluntary non-interference with the freedom to choose of humans and the customs (some call them laws) of nature.
The question is really, if God knows all and can do all, why didn't He intervene? I think the answer is, he can, but often the order of nature and our freedom is worth more to him than the disasters that happen.
If as a species we only could be saved by God taking away our freedom of choice and reducing us to mere angels, who have no choice but to obey God, then that would be pretty sad, and I for one am rather human, despite all the suffering that occurs due to human actions, than a creature that lacks the unique responsibility that comes with this life.
Cheers,
Emile.
Or qmail:
echo jmerkey@drdos.com >>/var/qmail/control/badmailfrom
Cheers,
Emile
And it's "trusted" by the remote peer (content provider), not "trusted" by the owner.
Cheers,
Emile.
The problem is that whatever computer you're connecting to, can verify that you do it from Commercial App v1.0, key ID 03adeb4652098d, and not from Open Source App v2.88, that merely pretends to be Commercial App.
/used/ to be able to pretend, if you just followed a protocol. Ditto for the OS: if you control the OS, you can fake things like eg. MAC addresses, CPU serial nrs. to the application.
/run/ Firefox, if you can't access any website because CNN prefers that you use IE, which they know does not filter ads, leaves cookies as they are, and does not print/save pages they don't want you to print/save, /AND CNN CAN VERIFY THAT YOU *ARE* RUNNING IE, WITH NO FAKING POSSIBLE/ then that helps you exactly zero.
You
This is what's made impossible with TCPA.
So even though you can still
Are you starting to understand the problem now? Power from the consumer, power to the content providers. Internet reduced to digital TV. Drool'n click, view the ads.
Cheers,
Emile.
How about this for a horror scenario.
Let's say EM noise or narrowband CW or FM has little to no effect to the basic functions of the organism. If that weren't true, I agree we'd probably already know about it.
What if certain pulse patterns (AM side effect of any power efficient digital transmission) turn out to significantly raise the 'noise floor' in mammal brains, causing strong and clear thoughts/emotions to remain, but subtle inspiration to be reduced by 50 %.
It will be near impossible to ever prove such a phenomenon scientifically, because inspiration/creativity/sensitivity to subtle thoughts is a little hard to measure in animal experiments, and because you have no control group.
But in the end, society becomes less and less likely to produce another Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Bach or Chopin as we continue to increase the microwave flooding of the whole developed world so that a few gadget addicts can play with their toys.
It would be such an unbearable drama. The frightning thing is that I see no way of countering such a scenario, and no automatic countereffect either.
Cheers,
Emile.
... between the amount of energy absorbed and the increase in cancer probability???
Really, if all biology would reason 'there either has to be a linear, direct relationship to factor X of phenomenon Y to endpoint Z, or else I've just proven that Y has nothing to do with Z', then it wouldn't advance very fast as a science.
It can as well be the frequency, or there can be a non-linear relationship (eg. anything above 0,2 mW/cm2 gives 5 % increase), or whatever.
Cheers,
Emile.
Sure, but I'm sure that we evolved to deal with the natural noise and how its energy is spread across the spectrum.
If you start pulsing in specific rhythms and at specific carrier frequencies, it may have a wholly different effect.
Considering the complexities of living organisms, I would not find that at far fetched in any way.
Cheers,
Emile.
Of course, this gets much harder, and without guaranteed success, if the length of the 'X'es string is limited to, let's say, 16 characters.
Cheers,
Emile.
So, it appears that Sveasoft, who makes firmware that is derived from GPLed software for Linksys' WRT54G router, has found an interesting way to 'discourage' recipients of their source and binary software from redistributing it -- apparently without violating section 6 of the GPL ('You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.').
/future/ pre-releases without subscribing again, for a certain fee.
/the particular version of the software you received/, it does not trigger GPL section 6.
Their trick is that in order to receive binary + source prereleases, you need to have a paid subscription with them. That's fine under the GPL of course. However, they say that once you excercise your right to redistribute granted by the GPL, they will terminate your paid subscription, which of course does not revoke any rights to the software you've received (which were given you under a GPL license after all), but it does make it impossible to get
They seem to think that because the 'punishment' for excercising certain rights granted by the GPL does not place any additional restrictions on
It's all very interesting and could be a way for software companies that build their products upon GPLed software to harass their customers into not redistributing them.
Worrisome indeed, if you ask me.
Cheers,
Emile.
Indeed. A continuous wave or narrowband FM signal at 2.4 GHz shouldn't do much harm other than warming things a little. However, when you start sending all sorts of pulse patterns it becomes a whole different matter.
I can see a possibility of small water droplets functioning as a small AM demodulator for 2.4 GHz signals -- after all, temperature will follow signal intensity. If such droplets are enclosed in something else, pressure will vary with the same pulse rithm. Perhaps it's even possible to make a small cavity resonate, I don't know.
The problem is that almost all research into non-ionizing radiation looks only at the amount of energy transferred, and the risks associated with absorbing that energy, as if it's diffuse and applied continuously. Indeed, when evaluated this way, any electromagnetic energy with frequencies below X-ray will have very manageable risks.
Really, unless we know about the long term effects (and can you ever? I mean, there's no way of scientifically measuring, say, a 5 % decrease in intelligence or concentration over 10 years), I want to be able to avoid WiFi if I want to.
To me that means it's OK in gas stations, hotel lobbies, places where you will only be for a short time, but not if you start bathing parks, residential areas and everything in pulsed 2.4 GHz.
The brains is the most complex analog device in the known universe, and as the signal of one thing is always the noise of another, I am not too happy with the prospect of flooding the world in microwaves.
Not even if that means free broadband. Sorry.
You're way off the mark here.
Let's say I offer you something, and I say that you can have it and enjoy it, but I expected to be compensated. You decide that you're not going to pay me, and that you're going to take it anyway. How does this senario in any way equate to what you've just suggested?
It does not, but what you just said is not what you seemed to implicate in your parent post -- that there must always be compensation and it's theft otherwise.
Theft is removing something from someone.
Copying is duplicating without removing.
In either case, not giving compensation where that's expected is in some cases illegal, in some cases immoral, and in some cases the expectation of a return was unjustified.
But theft and copying without authorisation are two completely different things. It's much more natural that there should always be a compensation when something is removed from someone, with the gift as the exception. But because nothing is removed from me if you take a copy, compensation is not that natural. The only reason why compensation may be required, is that society has decided to try and stimulate the production of information by granting a tradeable monopoly on copying.
Cheers,
Emile.
By your reasoning, enjoying anything of value without compensation is illegal. In that case, any form of giving without expecting a return is illegal too. That'd be sick.
.., .., .., .., auctioned for .., .., and .., resp." would be ideal. Couple this with a good search engine to allow public and artist to find each other and I think music, games, film, and other products of pure information could thrive without copyrights.
This is exactly what the RIAA wants you to believe. Receiving value without compensating is theft. That is simply not true. Outside the zero-sum world (esp.. the realm of information and other intangibles) you'll find lots of information wheter this doesn't hold.
If I don't respect a lawful monopoly on distribution, then I'm violating the law. I'm not taking any property. I'm not taking his monopoly. I'm not taking anything physical. I'm only lowering the probability of me purchasing a copy. If that's bad, then informing myself must be also bad because it lowers the probability of me purchasing crap products.
However you turn things around, you keep coming back to an artificial construct that is (was!) designed with a specific purpose in mind: to encourage the production of creative works, at the cost of disallowing free sharing of copies and derived works. The tradeoff might have been worth it, but with the current terms and in its current DMCA/EUCD form, I'm personally convinced that doesn't hold anymore.
IMHO we need to move to a scheme where the interested audience pays once, before the work is published. The audience invests based on reputation and bears the risk. After publishing, the author releases all control.
A system where an artist could put up an auction saying, "I need 750,000 EUR to make this production. Collection of funds ends in three months. If the required amount hasn't been reached, everyone will be payed back minus 5% to cover auction costs and other expenses, guaranteed by bank XYZ. Previous works are
The only thing you'd miss as an artist is the income from surprise hits. You'll only be able to cash in on your next production. But this still seems to be a better tradeoff, that wouldn't put off artists in the same way the current system puts of the audience and produces bland, riskless prefab artists. All IMHO of course.
Cheers,
Emile.
If you can get more privacy by spending money, then you obviously don't have the "right" to that amount of privacy unless you pay for it.
Obviously this line of reasoning is nonsense. Substitute 'justice', 'freedom of speech', 'representatives in Congress' for 'privacy' and you see how ridiculous this is.
Cheers,
Emile.